1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to preparation of out dried clove slices from whole cloves for provision into cut tobacco rag suitable for manufacturing cigarettes.
2. Description of the Related Art
Cloves, the dried flower buds of the tropical tree Eugenia Aromatica of the Myrtle family, are popularly used as a spice with myriad applications. One such popular application is the mixture of dried clove slices into tobacco rag suitable for smoking in a cigarette.
Several conventional processes are currently in use for producing slices of out, dried cloves from whole cloves for use in a mixture of tobacco rag. Such conventional processes suffer from three general problems: (1) a large amount of physical space is required to produce commercial quantities of cut cloves; (2) the processes are step specific and generally not automated, resulting in a substantial amount of time being consumed for each step and the process as a whole; and (3) the process of shearing or outting cloves produces clove dust which is undesirable to the final tobacco rag product. Generally, cloves are received from commercial agricultural producers arrive as whole, dried buds. To process the whole cloves into cut slices suitable for tobacco rag, the moisture content of whole, dried cloves must be increased before subjecting the whole cloves to a shearing process. Increasing the moisture content of whole cloves is necessary in order to reduce the amount of clove dust which is produced during the shearing process. Clove dust is not only a waste of clove material, but also reduces the quality of sheared product when included in the processed tobacco rag.
Conventional processes involve soaking dried whole cloves in large, water soaking tanks and subsequently drip drying the soaked cloves before subjecting the cloves to shearing cutters. Several problems exist with this water soaking process. First, water soaking and subsequent drip drying is generally very time consuming, taking up to 10 hours for a single batch of cloves. Second, a large volume of water is required for this soaking process and high volume soaking tanks are required to produce a commercial quantity of cloves, resulting in the requirement of a large amount of physical space for production. The disposal of such large volumes of waste water presents yet another problem.
With regard to the shearing process, most shearing cutters yield a low volume rate of cut cloves per unit of time. In addition, the particle size distribution of the cut product is poor, resulting in a high level of clove dust even after the conventional soaking process. In addition, the cutting shears must be stopped and sharpened after a few hours in operation, thereby resulting in further delays in the manufacturing process.
After the clove slices are formed from the shearing cutters, the cut cloves are then sun dried or passed through high temperature mechanical rotary driers or vibro-driers. Sun drying requires large open spaces and is obviously dependent on the availability of sunshine. Furthermore, frequent turning of the cut clove layer generates additional clove dust. Mechanical rotary and vibro-driers operating at high temperatures result in a loss of clove oil which lessens the quality of the cut product and the quality of the smoking article. Tumbling or vibrating the cut cloves through such driers will also give rise to further generation of clove dust.
Thus, an object of the invention is to provide an improved process for the manufacture of cut, dried cloves.
A further object of the invention is to provide a process wherein the use of large volume water soaking of whole cloves is eliminated.
A further object of the invention is to provide a process which can continually process cloves.
A further object of the invention is to provide a process which improves the processing time per unit of volume over prior art processing systems.
A further object of the invention is to provide the above objects in a system which provides moisturized whole cloves of similar conditioning to that of conventional processes for provision to shearing mechanisms.
A further object of the invention is to provide a process which provides high quality cut portions of whole cloves for inclusion into out tobacco rag suitable for the manufacture of cigarettes.
A further object of the invention is to provide an automated process for maintaining the shearing mechanism in prime shearing condition.
Yet another object of the invention is to provide for the reduction of clove dust resulting from the above processes.
A still further object of the invention is to provide the above objects of the invention in conjunction with a continuous drying process.